Category Archives: (Semi)Transformation Playing Cards

Monica Lee, an American artist, designed this set of Spades playing card artworks as her class work in 2013. The project worked with watercolor and gouache on panel. She decided to turn shape of playing card suit into the imaginary vegetation of garden, where the Jack should be a gardener, the Queen should be a madam, and the King should be a child living in the house of the garden.

Patrik Svensson is an illustrator working with clients worldwide from his studio in Gothenburg, Sweden. He has created artworks for Starbucks, IKEA, Sony Music, etc. These playing card artworks are his set of semi-transformation courts for a deck of playing cards. I decided to omit the King of Hearts, Casanova, because I don’t think that a pornographic element is nice for this set.

These playing card artworks are designed by an American artist, Kerri Cordeiro. She created artworks for a full poker deck. Courts feature silhouettes of horses. Horses in queen cards have signs of femininity. The name of these playing cards forces to think that all four jacks, queens and kings should be different. Unfortunately, Kerri hasn’t revealed all court cards.

The strongest part of this pack of playing card artworks is number cards. It’s hard to say how logically enough they are connected with horses, but they are nice semi-transformation playing cards represented by beautiful plants (branches of trees). Unfortunately, the plants don’t have anything common with grass, hay or grains – natural food for horses. So, a “dietetic” connection doesn’t work. But it could. Horses are herbivores and have a unique digestive system which requires a high-fiber diet that is consumed in small amounts over a long time. That’s why they actually spend most of their time eating. Maybe we should accept those plants as some symbolic food for horses.

This is her second pack of playing card artworks. The first one, Monogrammed Playing Cards (now she names it Cocktail playing cards), has been already featured on pages of this site.

Stranger & Stranger is an award winning packaging design and branding company specialising in alcoholic drinks. Since 1994 they have named, researched and registered wines and spirits brands worldwide. They have created bespoke and innovative bottle shapes, labels, closures and all secondary packaging.

To celebrate the year they broke out of their alcohol comfort zone and designed premium olive oils, fine foods, luxury luggage and other new stuff, they decided to create a deck of playing cards and a special set of such decks.

But even Stranger and Stranger needed some wise support in this question. So they teamed up with the well known company Dan & Dave (The D&D Playing Card Co.) to be able to use their knowledge and experience in the field of playing card production. Dan & Dave agreed to help with the production and the distribution of the deck. There are several articles dedicated to playing cards produced by Dan & Dave on this blog. So you can find out more about D&D and their experience in the field of playing card production.

Playing cards designed by the American artist, Kayla Selwyn (MahoHaku). She prepared these playing cards for her school project. But then she decided to make the whole deck of playing cards. So this is a project in work. Playing cards are based on Carnival comic characters of the artist.